They walked in silence for some time, and when they finally stopped, he turned to look at her.
“This will be the most important moment in your life, Opener. Remember that everything that happens now, happens because of what you will or will not do.”
“That's an awful lot to give to an insignificant little daughter of men, isn't it?” snapped Tara. She had been afraid for so long that she felt it loop back over to rage, and she held frightened and crying Fen close to her, rocking him.
Anders smiled coldly. “You have no idea. Now come on.”
The space he led her into could hold a dozen cathedrals and more. Deep in the rock of the mountain, it was a round place, the green lights gave it an unearthly haze. In the darkness, she could hear the rustle of thousands of wings, and the moment she and Anders entered, there was an enormous flight as some angels tried to come closer.
Two or three of them crowded her, and she started to scream, but Anders knocked them away with a strength that was terrifying for its carelessness.
“These are the forgotten,” he said to her. “We have been left behind, lost and left to wander. We envied you, wolves and men both, and because we could not be like you, we have chosen another path. The war never ends, and tonight, it will be won.”
He shoved her to the center, and all around her was the rustling of wings and the screaming of the angels. It echoed on and on until she thought that she would go mad, and when Fen's voice joined theirs, she couldn't take it.
“What do you want from me?” she cried out. “What do you want?”
The angels stilled and quieted, and as they settled, a heavy silence broke over the room. The pause was rich with expectation, and Tara's heart beat so loudly that she was sure it had its own echo.
“We want our allies,” Anders said softly. “The ones who fell, the ones who hate. They will come and they will destroy this pale world for us.”
“Demons,” she whispered, her heart turned to ice.
Anders laughed, a cracked and mad thing, and in that moment, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was insane. Perhaps it had happened when the war broke out, or perhaps it had happened in the long, long years since, but there was something missing in him, and there would be nothing in the world that would bring it back.
“Bring them back!” he shouted, and his voice thundered through the chamber. “Bring them back; do it with that book that you hold. This is your fate, little daughter of men. This was the prophecy that was foretold by one of our own, and now it falls to you to change the world.”
“I won't,” she screamed frantically. “I won't, I won't serve you!”
Anders turned to face her, and to her terror, it wasn't rage on his face. Instead it was a softness, a sweetness. It was a look that said that it understood her and that she would never be anything more than a silly child to him.
“You will,” he said simply. “Or I will show you how long it takes a wolf-king to die.”
He pointed up, and at first Tara didn't understand what she was seeing.
Two angels heaved something enormous and heavy between them as they descended from the top of the chamber, and it was only when they fell further that she could see that it was a cage that they so casually tossed to one another. The cave was small and square, and Tara realized in horror that it was not empty.
“Mads!”
She remembered with a sickening lurch the story he had told her of angels killing people by dropping them to the ground, and when the cage hit the ground with a deafening clang, she ran for him, Fen clutched in her arms. Before she had gone two paces, Anders caught her, and he pointed to the cage.
“Your love is pure and strong. We know your heart, little daughter of men, and that wolf in there is the key to our salvation. Open the door for us.”
Tara was frozen. She couldn't decide what to do, and her tongue was stiff in her mouth. She wanted to beg for Mads' life, she wanted to shout in rage, and she wanted to break down into tears.
Anders made a gesture, and one of the scarred angels approached. The angel held a twisted iron rod, and the tip was pointed, but blunt. When he came close to the cage, he jabbed it in, and Mads howled with fury and pain as it struck him in the side. While he was turned, another angel with an identical rod did the same.
Mads was a fury of fur and fang, but in such an enclosed place, he couldn't do anything to defend himself.
“Stop,” Tara screamed. “Stop hurting him!”
“Will you do what we ask?”
Her answer was too slow. Anders gave the signal, and this time one of the iron bars caught Mads across his face. There was a sickening crunch, and she saw one of his teeth go flying. The howl of pain and fury threatened to bring down the rocks, and tears flowed down Tara's face.
“Yes, yes, I will,” she said. “Stop hurting him.”
She spoke quietly, but it was enough for Anders. The two angels with the iron rods drew away, and suddenly and with absolute clarity, every eye in that place was on her.
The wolf howled, and in a heartbeat, Mads turned into a man again.
“Don't, Tara,” he shouted.
She couldn't look at him. She had seen the blood on his face, and she knew that she could never bear to see him hurt, not when she could stop it.
“Swear to me,” she said instead.
Anders raised an eyebrow.
“You would trust my word?”
“I would trust your pride,” she said. “You're too proud to lie. Swear to me that he will not be hurt.”
Anders inclined his head to her, and she saw a trace of the proud and beautiful thing he had once been.
“I do so swear.”
Tara took a deep breath and, shifting Fen to her other arm, she reached for the book of unbinding in her pocket.
TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK SIX: Love at the End of the World - Volume 6
***
Love at the End of the World
***
Behind her, Tara could hear Mads howling, his voice terribly human and furious in the angels' conclave. In her arms, Fen had finally given up wailing and subsided into a kind of hiccupping exhausted cry, and she held her son even tighter. There were perhaps hundreds of scarred angels in the chambers above her, but the only one she cared about was Anders, terribly beautiful, terribly strong, and as far as she could tell, completely insane.
“I want you to let him go,” she said softly, and he shrugged, his massive wings rustling restlessly.
“I swore he would not be hurt,” the angel said carelessly. “I promised nothing else.”
“Let him go, or I will refuse to do the ritual at all,” she said threateningly. She did not have power here, not really, but whatever she could get, she would be damned if she let it slip through her fingers.
Anders looked thoughtful, and then, as simply as a man taking an apple from a tree, he plucked Fen out of her arms. The baby squalled angrily at being taken from his mother, and though Anders held him firmly, there was something terribly careless about it. He held her son like he would hold a ball or a vase, an object to be taken away and returned at his whim, and Tara's stomach lurched with fear.
“I promised for your caged lover,” the angel remarked. “I promised nothing for your son. You have no rights here, little daughter of men. You are here to serve your purpose. You are here to do as I say.”
Tara's fear and pain nearly drove her to the ground, but then a loud voice came out of darkness.
“No, she is not, Anders.”
Lukas swept down on wings that were as pure and untouched as snow, and he hovered above them, stirring the air with his feathers. He and Anders were untouched, unlike the rest of their angel brothers. Where Anders had escaped injury during the angelic war through sheer strength and ferocity, Lukas had refused to fight.
Anders looked up startled, and as neatly as he had been taken from Tara, Lukas took Fen from Anders.
The look of surprise and rage on Anders' face would have been amusing if it
was on the face of something less powerful and less insane, but he threw himself in the air as well. Now Tara could see how much larger he was than Lukas, and the other angels rustled angrily around them. When she saw that every eye was on the two in the air, she began edging back toward the cage.
“This is wrong, you know this is wrong,” Lukas said, cradling the child in his arms. He had known Fen since before he was born, and the baby settled against him, if not happy, then at least not screaming.
“I know what thousands of years have done to us, brother,” Anders shouted. He swept close but Lukas evaded him, shielding the baby in his arms as he did so.
“All you see is hate and despair, and if that is all you see, that is all that you will put into the world. Those were the first things we were taught.”
Anders roared with anger and lunged for him, only to be deftly dodged again. If having the baby taken from him had broken his composure, the mention of having been taught fractured him further. Tara didn't have time to speculate on the emotions of angels. With all eyes on the quarreling pair, she managed to get to the iron cage, where Mads was imprisoned. The angels who had guarded him were watching the fight, and the iron rods that they had been using to beat him were left carelessly nearby.
Mads was a werewolf, a powerful one and notoriously hard to kill, but as she approached, she could see the way that one eye swelled shut, and dark bruising on his jaw. In his human form, he was far more vulnerable, and she crept closer, praying that there was no other injury he was hiding.
“Tara, get away from here,” he said softly. There was a guttural rasp to his words, and when he looked at her, there was despair there.
“I won't leave you,” she murmured, coming close to the bars. Above them, Anders and Lukas continued to dodge and feint, Lukas maddeningly calm and Anders descending even further into psychosis.
“You have to,” Mads hissed, wrapping his hands around the cage bars. “Get away from here. Go find my brothers, or let them find you. They'll protect you. They'll find a way to rescue Fen. Just get away from here!”
“I couldn't leave you,” she said softly. “Never. Not when we've found each other again. I couldn't leave Fen. Now, hush.”
Mads started to disagree with her, but then she pulled out the book, the one that freed bound things and the one that the angels needed. She was destined to be the only one who could use it, and she figured that if destiny was going to have a hand in things that it could damn well go her way for once.
She flipped to a section marked by a hare in a trap, for the loosing of things caged in iron, and in the ancient language that had only ever been spoken by a scant few men on the planet, she started to read.
The words were liquid smoke on her tongue, with a life of their own, and her mind cast back to the first time she had used it. Mads had lied to her, and instead of freeing a hero, he had used her to find an ancient weapon capable of killing angels. That was what had driven her away from him in the first place, and now that she used the magic again, she was seized by doubt and pain. The light flashed, and the cage sprang open, allowing Mads to step out.
“I want you to run,” he said urgently, pointing to one of the tunnels out. “They brought me from that direction. I saw light along the way. You can go out there, you can escape.”
“Onto a barren mountain with no climbing gear.” She shook her head. “I'm here to stay, Mads, and I am not leaving without you and with Fen.”
He hesitated for a moment, and then he nodded, because he could tell that she was right. There was nothing that either of them could do. Lukas had brought them here, and now he tried to talk to an insane angel, who was lunging at him when he could. Tara knew that her baby would always be safe in Lukas' arms, but she had no such hope for Anders.
She turned around to see that Mads had picked up one of the iron rods that they had been using to torment him, and from the way that he swung it, she could tell that it was immensely heavy.
“It won't kill them,” Mads said grimly. “The only thing that will do that is the sword I left with my brother. If they come close to us, if they want to hurt us, however, I will make them regret it.”
Lukas, for his part, however, had looked down and seen that Mads was free. In a heart stopping moment, he folded his wings and dove for them. He was falling, and it even took Anders a moment to follow him. Tara covered her mouth with her hand at this dangerous stunt, but he halted right above them, and pressed Fen to her arms.
“Keep your eyes down and run,” was all he said, and then he soared back into the air, right past Anders, who had tried to follow them.
“What—?” Tara asked, but Mads’ hand was on the back of her head, forcing it down, and with the other he pulled her along. Above them, the air flashed with an intense green-gold light, and from the shrieks of the angels, she knew that Lukas must have blinded them for a long moment.
“It's one of their tricks,” Mads said bitterly. “They fight at night just to use it sometimes.”
Hurriedly, they ran to the tunnel that Mads had been through before, and though they did not have Lukas' small light to guide them this time, they made steady progress. After a moment, Mads dropped down into his wolf form, and with one hand holding her baby and the other hand on Mads' back, they made their way into the darkness. Mads' wolf eyes were far keener than her human eyes, and they avoided disaster until they came to the light spot in the system that Mads had spoken about.
Tara remembered the long shaft that they had descended in order to get into the angels' nest in the first place, but this was more promising. The tunnel sloped downward, and ahead, they could see the last rays of sunlight.
Mads emerged first, and Tara cautiously peered out behind him. What they saw made her heart sink, and she staggered backwards. There was a flat drop down, and what would be simple for a creature with wings would be a suicide climb for her and Mads.
“I can't, I can't....” she murmured, and Mads nodded wearily.
Somehow, they both ended up sitting on the ledge. Mads wrapped his arms around her, and Fen cradled between them. It occurred to her that this was the first time that Mads had ever held her and their baby, and her heart broke. Slow tears dripped down her cheeks, and she buried her face in Mads' tattered shirt.
“We're going to die,” she said, her voice soft and flat, and though he didn't agree, he couldn't lie to her either.
“Can... Can I?”
Tara was confused for a moment, and then she saw the longing way he was looking at Fen, cradled in her arms. He had never held their son before, and it hurt her heart that the only time he might be allowed to do so was at the very end.
“Yes, oh darling, yes.”
She was surprised to see him take Fen with such an experienced hand. Mads knew how to rock the baby, how to support his head, how to make sure that the child was comfortable, and he chuckled at her astonishment.
“I'm the oldest in a large family,” he said with something of his old humor. “Do you think I managed to get through my teens without knowing a little bit about babysitting?”
Something about that image tickled her. She knew Mads as a fearsome foe, a tender lover, a man who had always known what he was going to do and how to get his way. The idea of him as a gawky teenager with a number of unruly siblings in toe and a little one strapped to his back was too funny, and her giggles bubbled out of her mouth.
“I can't imagine you as a teenager,” she confessed when he quirked an eyebrow at her. “I wish I could have known you then.”
“You probably don't,” he admitted. “I had only a few things on my mind then, and none of them would have interested you.”
She thought back to the shy, mousy, bookish girl she had been as a child, the heartbroken child from the shattered home, and then the unlucky woman who looked for love in all the wrong places. Impulsively, she threw her arms around Mads, planting a firm kiss on his lips.
“Tara?”
“I'm so lucky that I've known you,” she sai
d softly. “I am so blessed.”
“A funny thing for you to say when you are sitting on a ledge with no way down and no way out.” He sighed heavily. “Tara, you must know that you should not let them take you. What that madman wants is nothing less than the end of the world.”
She bit her lip and nodded soberly. Though he looked unhappy at giving up his son, he passed Fen back to her.
“He's a proper wolf, that child,” he said, and Tara nodded happily. It was a fatherly thing to say, and with an aching heart, she could see what a good father Mads could have been.
“If Lukas is still alive, he might be able to save you. All I know is that I need to draw them away. They can't hunt you and look for me at the same time, and I've learned a little something about these tunnels while I was in them. I'm going to draw them away. If you get away, go find my family at Cairn Rock. It's in northern Minnesota, and if you go up there and ask for my brothers, sooner or later they'll find you.”
“And you'll come for us?”
He didn't give her a reply. Instead, he kissed her, hard and almost viciously.
“Wait here,” he said. “If I believe in anything right now, I know that angel does not want you dead. Wait here for Lukas.”
He hesitated, and she smiled, her eyes watery with tears.
“Don't do this,” she said, even as she knew that there was little choice for him.
He took one last look at her, and gave her another kiss, this one chaste and soft.
“I'll find you when I can,” he said. “You'll see me again, I swear it.”
He looked down at their son, who he had only known existed for a few days, and planted a kiss on Fen's cheek as well.
With nothing more than that, he dropped down into his wolf form, and stalked back into the darkness.
Tara watched him go for as long as she could, and finally, all she could do was huddle down close to the side of the cave. Her thick coat and boots kept her warm enough, and she tucked Fen into her coat as well. She didn't know what was going to come, but now she felt a deep weariness and exhaustion wash over her. If Lukas could come, he would, and she knew that venturing into the caves again would be little better than suicide.
Hunting Hearts II (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 5
